The City has an existing pilot incentive program for solar hot water. Incentives and financial tools to support the proliferation of renewable energy is included in the draft Greenest City Action Plan. Details here: http://vancouver.ca/sustainability/SolarHomes.htm

Solar PV provides electricity directly to the building it sits on. Rather than relying on dams located 800km to the North east (where up to 15% of the energy is lost in transmission), distributed generation provides not only an independent supply of grid-tied energy, it provides energy security in case of disruption (every wind storm in Vancouver creates black-outs, the 2008 vault fire downtown had power out for up to 5 days for some buildings.) Look to a feed in tariff (like Ontario, Europe) to kick off this initiative, and fund it from carbon or congestion taxes.